It’s also partly a war film and a dystopian thriller.
Prime Video has added Civil War to its service, one of 2024’s best action flicks and maybe one of the year’s best movies, period.
The project comes from filmmaker Alex Garland – whose impressive CV as a writer and/or director also includes 28 Days Later, Annihilation, Dredd, Ex Machina and Sunshine.
His latest directorial effort is set in a near-future America led by an authoritarian federal government that is engulfed in a civil war between States.
The story follows a team of military-embedded journalists (led by Kirsten Dunst, Spider-Man) as they race against time to reach Washington DC to interview the US President (Nick Offerman, The Last of Us) before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
Also appearing alongside Dunst and Offerman in the movie are Callee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Dune), Wagner Moura (Narcos) and Jesse Plemons (Game Night), with the latter cast in a terrifying one-scene cameo for the ages.
Civil War is an extremely haunting movie, suggesting through its dystopian scenario that it wouldn’t take much for such events to become a reality.
It’s also a very compelling exploration of the psychology of war journalists and the responsibilities involved with this type of work.
On top of this though, it’s an electrifying action film – featuring some of the most hard-hitting, nightmarish and thrilling set-pieces of recent memory.
Holding an 81% Rotten Tomatoes score, here is a sample of some of the positive reviews Civil War earned:
ABC News: “In a hotly divisive, post-Jan 6 election year, Alex Garland embeds us with journalists, led by a wow Kirsten Dunst, covering a speculative second war between the states. The result is the most original and propulsively exciting movie of the year so far.”
The Australian: “The heart-racing battle scenes are superbly shot.”
Chicago Reader: “It’s a searingly focused ‘what if’ that eschews partisan soapboxes as it takes a hard-eyed look at everything war warps and takes.”
Houston Chronicle: “Civil War takes what many whisper about in these divisive, polarising times and turns it into a smartly crafted, suspenseful, propulsive thriller that manages to make a statement without tipping Garland’s political hand too much.”
Detroit News: “[Garland’s] movie is designed not to please but to provoke, and it captures a world turned upside down with the same remove as a war photographer’s camera.”
New Statesman: “Garland’s sharpest, most visionary rendering yet of the world gone wrong.”
How to watch Civil War
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Civil War is now available to stream on Prime Video in the UK and Ireland
If you want to watch it but want to save the cash, you could use this technique with an Amazon Fire Stick to save money.
The trick is something called ‘leapfrogging’, which is a way to skip between shorter, cheaper subscriptions to watch what you want to watch without signing up for expensive year-long contracts.
For example, you can get a basic Netflix package for £6.99, and stream what you want to watch via your Fire Stick and cancel it before your next bill.
You can then take advantage of the free trials of other services without signing up to them, all from the same place on your Fire Stick, so it’s super easy and convenient!
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